Abstract:

Because knowledge work is very different depending on the worker and its results are not always visible to others, it is impossible to measure the productivity of knowledge workers in practice. Instead of measuring it numerically, it is possible to evaluate how different factors affect productivity in knowledge work.

The goal of the thesis was to study the following research questions:.

1. Which factors increase and which factors decrease knowledge work productivity in the case company?.

2. How can knowledge work productivity be improved in the case company?.

This was done by interviewing knowledge workers in an IT service company by using a detailed list of factors, which was formed based on previous studies and other theoretical frameworks.

This study shows that the productivity factors are highly subjective and have different effect on different people. The factors are also linked to each other, which makes it difficult to affect only a single factor. Some of the most significant groups of factors include co-workers, amount of autonomy, learning and teaching, attitudes, tacit knowledge transfer, organization culture, working conditions and that the company treats its employees as assets, not as costs. The most prevalent single factors proved to be the amount of responsibility, trust, the stress level and the level of challenge and difficulty of the task.

Improving productivity starts with the organization culture because it is possible to change all the other significant factors through it. The employees should be given freedom to choose their own ways of working and which technologies they want to use, which gives them the feeling of being trusted and valued, which in turn increases productivity via higher motivation.